With more than one million page views and more than 4,000 items, this blog provides news and commentary on public policy, business and economic issues related to the $3 billion California stem cell agency, officially known as the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine(CIRM). David Jensen, a retired California newsman, has published this blog since January 2005. His email address is djensen@californiastemcellreport.com.

Monday, May 21, 2012

In a move that was long overdue, the $3
billion California stem cell agency last week hired a director of
information technology to straighten out key problems ranging from
its grants management system to how it handles its website.

The new hire comes as the CIRM
governing board faces the results of its first-ever performance audit, which is markedly critical of how the agency handles its
information. Half of the audit's 20 highest priority recommendations for improvement focus on information deficiencies, including
critical information necessary for CIRM executives to determine the
agency's performance.

Solving those problems will fall on
the shoulders of Bill Gimbel, who is no stranger to CIRM. He has been
working with the agency as an information technology advisor since
2010 through a contract with Infonetica, Inc., of Pleasanton, Ca., according to CIRM spokesman Kevin McCormack. Gimbel is now the first staff person in a chief technology position at CIRM since October 2007, when about 25 percent of CIRM employees left.

Bill Gimbel

A graduate of MIT, Gimbel, who will be
paid $180,000 annually, has a broad range of experience in computer
technology and software dating back to 1992. According to his
Linkedin web site, he was most recently director of IT at Infonetica.
He lists himself as owner of aptReader, an app for reference books.
He has also worked for LearningExpress and Scholastic, Inc.

The stem cell agency has been wrestling with information technology issues for years. The critical grants
management system has been an issue at least since 2007, when
directors were told its costs would not exceed $757,000. No figures
for the total spent since then have been made public by CIRM, which
is attempting to build a custom system, but the amount clearly and
easily surpasses the 2007 estimate, based on some of the outside
consulting costs. Although the agency hopes to resolve many of the
problems by the end of this calendar year, the grant system was the
target of considerable attention by Moss Adams, the firm that
prepared the performance audit.

Over the years, CIRM directors have received
intermittent, sketchy CIRM staff reports about the grants management
system, but the Moss Adams discussion is the most
comprehensive.

"Integration
of website content management has not been an integral part of the
GMS (grants management system) development process, which could
result in suboptimal operational efficiency and effectiveness.

"Grants management system
development is effectively managed at a tactical level, but it lacks
dedicated, strategic governance and oversight, which has resulted in
an elongated development process and requirements conflicts."

Moss Adams said,

"The new grants management system
intellectual property module, currently under development, does not
include provisions to address commercialization activity."

The performance audit additionally
said,

"CIRM board members and senior
management do not receive regularly updated, enterprise-level
performance information. The ability to evaluate performance against
strategic goals is critical to effective leadership and program
monitoring, evaluation, and reporting. CIRM does not currently have a
formal performance reporting program."

Moss Adams continued on other
information technology topics:

"Data and document access are
inefficient as a result of CIRM operating without a document
management system.....In most cases, CIRM staff cannot access
information without human interface. Information is stored in
multiple locations, which are not linked or indexed."

The audit said that the agency has
tried to solve its information problems without a plan.

"CIRM’s
information system needs have been met by a variety of tools,
including in-house developed applications, off-the-shelf
applications, databases, and spreadsheets, most of which are not
integrated," the audit stated.

One of the effects of all this is much
wasted time when CIRM's tiny staff tries to extract information from
the hodge-podge of systems. It is time that cannot be spared as the
workload increases in the next few years, as it is certain to do.

About Me

The California Stem Cell Report is the only nongovernmental website devoted solely to the $3 billion California stem cell agency. The report is published by David Jensen, who worked for 22 years for The Sacramento Bee in a variety of editing positions, including executive business editor and special projects editor. He was the primary editor on the 1992 Pulitzer Prize-winning series, "The Monkey Wars" by Deborah Blum, which dealt with opposition to research on primates. Jensen served as a press aide in the 1974 campaign and first administration of Gov. Jerry Brown. (Time served: two years and one week.) He writes from his sailboat on the west coast of Mexico with occasional visits to land. Jensen began writing about the stem cell agency in 2005, noting that it is an unprecedented effort that uniquely combines big science, big business, big academia, big politics, religion, ethics and morality as well as life and death. The California Stem Cell Report has been identified as one of the best stem cell sites on the Internet. Its readership includes the media (both mainstream and science), a wide range of academic/research institutions globally, the NIH and California policy makers.